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Documenting Black History in the Digital AGE: Conversation with Alex Cherian, The Lennie Chism Show

February 19, 2013

Documenting Black History in the Digital AGE: Conversation with Alex Cherian, San Franciso State Film Archivist

Alex Cherian is a film archivist who began working with film by using ‘Pulp Fiction’ to teach students the meaning of black comedy in Shakespeare. During an internshipin San Francisco he met his wife Melissa and emigrated from England to get married in 2007. He has run the Bay Area Television Archive at SF State since then, raising Federal funds to purchase equipment and digitize local newsfilm and documentaries from the 1950s-70s. These are made available to view online for free. In 2011 he became a U.S. citizen, at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland.

Archived Black Panthers footage available online

October 03, 2012 --

Nearly seven hours of previously unseen news and documentary footage of the Black Panthers movement are now available online through the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive at SF State.

Film Archivist Alex Cherian works in the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive.

The 120 clips come from Bay Area television stations as well as documentary films, and offer a glimpse at the social revolutions that took place during the 1960s and 70s and their connection to SF State.

"If you look at the Black Panthers collection, and then you look at our SF State (1968 student-led) strike collection, you're going to see the same faces," said Film Archivist Alex Cherian. The Black Panthers campaigned on the campus, he added, because they believed education was key to advancing the cause of civil rights.